![\"Mackenzie](\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/uox_v-YM_EIJQW3VERkKSi2sFUY=\/4000x0\/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(666x0:668x2):format(webp)\/mackenzie-scott-jeff-bezos-met-gala-062325-11ef2998a6f2480180f5b08aeee78f25.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>Scott was raised in an affluent neighborhood in San Francisco.\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0<\/em>reported that her father worked as a financial advisor and her mother stayed home to raise Scott and her two brothers.<\/p>\n When she was 17, her father\u2019s firm declared bankruptcy, and she took on extra work to graduate from Hotchkiss, her Connecticut boarding school, a year early. Scott later worked as a waitress to pay her way through Princeton University, where she studied creative writing under the late\u00a0Toni Morrison.<\/p>\n Over the course of her career, Scott has published two books. Her debut novel,\u00a0The Testing of Luther Albright,<\/em>\u00a0took her a decade to complete and was published in 2005. Her second book,\u00a0Traps,<\/em>\u00a0was published in 2013.<\/p>\n Scott revealed in the afterword of her first novel that she knew she wanted to be a writer when she was 6 years old. Prior to her death in 2019, Toni Morrison described Scott as an \u201cextraordinary writer, almost full-blown.\u201d<\/p>\n After college, Scott moved to New York City to pursue her dream of writing a novel, but found it hard to write while waitressing. So when she was invited to interview for a job at a financial firm, she agreed, not knowing that her future husband would be the one conducting it.<\/p>\n Bezos hired Scott \u2014 based largely on a recommendation from Morrison, per\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 and they soon began a whirlwind romance. The couple dated for three months before getting engaged and were married in 1993.<\/p>\n Shortly after they married, Bezos told Scott he wanted to quit his job and start his own digital bookselling company. She encouraged him to go for it, and they moved to Seattle to pursue his dream.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a businessperson, but to me what I am hearing when he tells that idea is the passion and the excitement,\u201d Scott said during a 2013 interview on\u00a0Charlie Rose<\/em>\u00a0of Bezos\u2019 initial plan. \u201cAnd to me, you know, watching your spouse, somebody that you\u00a0love have an adventure, what is better than that and being part\u00a0of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Bezos ended up founding Amazon in the garage of their Washington home in 1994.<\/p>\n Scott and Bezos\u00a0welcomed four kids\u00a0together during their marriage. The parents have kept many details about their children\u2019s lives private \u2014 including their names and the years they were born.<\/p>\n However, Scott did tell\u00a0Vogue\u00a0<\/em>in 2013 that she put her writing on hold after their third child was born. She said, \u201cI knew I couldn\u2019t be the kind of parent I wanted to be and continue writing. Those years were just too busy.\u201d<\/p>\n When they announced their divorce in 2019, Bezos and Scott made it clear that co-parenting their kids was the top priority. The Amazon billionaire wrote on X, \u201cThough the labels might be different, we remain a family, and we remain cherished friends.\u201d<\/p>\n After the terms of her divorce from Bezos were made public, Scott announced in May 2019 that she had agreed to give away at least half of her wealth throughout her life, per\u00a0Forbes<\/em>. As part of her mission, Scott uses a \u201cno strings attached\u201d philosophy, which means she hands control over how the money she donates is spent to the nonprofit\u2019s discretion.<\/p>\n According to Yield Giving, the website she established to detail her donations, Scott has given over $19 billion to over 2,000 nonprofit organizations. In a 2021 blog post,\u00a0she wrote\u00a0how she never \u201cloved\u201d the word philanthropy as it\u2019s often associated with \u201cfinancially wealthy people who believed they knew best how to solve other people\u2019s problems.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow much or how little money changes hands doesn\u2019t make it philanthropy,\u201d Scott penned. \u201cIntention and effort make it philanthropy.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years after her divorce from Bezos was finalized, Scott married Jewett, a chemistry teacher at her children\u2019s school. When he later joined her on the Giving Pledge and promised to also donate half of his wealth over his lifetime, he described Scott as \u201cone of the most generous and kind people\u201d he knew.<\/p>\n Scott and Jewett were married for just over a year before the philanthropist\u00a0filed for divorce\u00a0in September 2022. It was finalized four months later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MacKenzie Scott\u00a0was married to Amazon founder\u00a0Jeff Bezos\u00a0for 25 years before their\u00a0divorce in 2019. Scott and Bezos wed in 1993 after a whirlwind romance. Together, they welcomed four… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nScott is a novelist<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"MacKenzie](\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/A5JiwKAhrU1_R8a37S1ym6vbDn0=\/4000x0\/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2):format(webp)\/mackenzie-scott-amazon-party-062325-5d52dcfbe5754a59adbd1337615857da.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>She was married to Bezos for 25 years<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"eff](\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/xaeWV6Z8aLgRckD45skWPbnRMek=\/4000x0\/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(999x0:1001x2):format(webp)\/mackenzie-scott-jeff-bezos-allen-co-062325062325-9c3f54b2bdbf4c8faf71dd2f04b3236a.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>Scott helped him launch Amazon\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"Amazon.com](\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/72ECbPQzWdIvtk6WHmBCWf9FfTM=\/4000x0\/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2):format(webp)\/mackenzie-scott-jeff-bezos-italian-job-062325-9954254ea4d849cea1c224ea5d55fc33.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>She has four kids with Bezos<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"Chief](\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/qSxtrhfLxQU6S-6o_cckcyB8gKs=\/4000x0\/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(999x0:1001x2):format(webp)\/mackenzie-scott-jeff-bezos-parker-foundation-062325-32dfc33d61d44196a7d298573c297ab0.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>Scott pledged to donate half of her wealth before she dies\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"Mackenzie](\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/IyP4GSGDPCz4DmvlN6jmRNn7kSY=\/4000x0\/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(999x0:1001x2):format(webp)\/mackenzie-scott-vanity-fair-party-062325-199f7f1d6e3045989676a16b976bd0b3.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nShe remarried in 2021<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/photo\/?fbid=137052221991629&set=a.119473280416190;](\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/1yjmoU3gDBWzjcJNPwsSeLTL7V0=\/4000x0\/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(329x339:331x341):format(webp)\/MacKenzie-Scott-divorce-03-092722-e5fa31a872154bfcbb787ae5be7a9837.jpg\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>